Russia warns against space based weapons

Russia has warned - again - that putting weapons in space will piss them off. The Bush administration is considering formally approving and allowing space based weapons. There has been an informal ban on them for some time. The Clinton administration was especially concerned about the weaponization of space and canned a number of programs. There are no treaties at all that ban nonuclear space based weapons. This was a pretty bad misconception about space based weapons: a lot of people thought that the ABM Treaty between the US & USSR banned such things.

It didn't.

At all.

It merely stated "Thou Shalt Not Put Weapons In Space That Shoot Down Incoming Ballistic Missiles. "

Amen.

The US withdrew from the ABM Treaty under the Shrub on June 13, 2002. China and Russia promptly proposed a new treaty banning space based weapons. France, Canada, and the UK have come out against space based weapons as well. The UN seems to be pushing for the same thing.

The Russians are in a peculiar situation. They would have been the ones working to compete directly with the US back in the Soviet Unions Great Times. Now, they can't. They've been shaved of a lot of their ability to do so. I think they realize that and are now resorting to their other cards. As few as they are. One of them is a nontrivial card, but whether or not its a good enough one for this (or a successor administration) remains to be seen. That card is...

Taking aim at the United States, Russia's defense minister Thursday threatened retaliatory steps if any country puts weapons in space and said Moscow won't negotiate controls over tactical nuclear arms with nations that deploy them abroad, Russian media reported.

[...]

Ivanov's comment about negotiating controls over tactical nuclear weapons was also a clear reference to the United States, which has such arms in Europe.

"We are prepared to start talks about tactical nuclear weapons only when all countries possessing them keep these weapons on their own territory," Interfax and ITAR-Tass quoted Ivanov as saying. "Russia stores its tactical nuclear weapons on its own territory, which cannot be said about other countries."

The news agencies said Ivanov was responding to calls by former Sen. Sam Nunn for a Russian-American agreement providing for accountability of each other's tactical nuclear stockpiles, which have not been addressed by a series of treaties reducing strategic nuclear arms.

Nunn, an architect of a major program to secure and destroy nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union, has called for "transparent accountability" of tactical weapons as a safeguard against nuclear terrorism.

Russia wants to keep its tactical nuclear weapons — and to keep their number secret — to compensate for inferiority in conventional weapons, said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear expert with the Committee of Scientists for Global Security.

The Bush administration has not publicly called for an agreement on accountability and control over tactical nuclear weapons, which do not threaten U.S. territory, Pikayev said.

Excerpted from here.

Such is their card. It's a nontrivial one, but...it may not matter to this (or following) administrations. I am unsure how I feel about that card. Nukes are scary things indeed, buta t the same time, the Russians can't have a billion and one of them laying around in ecellent condition. They're not in a position to maintain them effectively either. On top of that, the Russians are not the only ones that we ought to making this sort of treaty with. The Chinese and others ought to be included. The Russians are not one of the top dogs anymore. They haven't been for a decade and change. Their might, such as it is, happens to be largely leftovers and those are quickly rotting.

We'll see what the diplomatic dance does. It should be interesting.